


Game for a Memory

by reminiscence



Category: Umineko no Naku Koro ni | When the Seagulls Cry
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Internal Conflict, ffn challenge: 100 prompts up to 100 MCs challenge, ffn challenge: advent calendar 2015, ffn challenge: chapter set boot camp, ffn challenge: diversity writing challenge, game-world, meta-world, word count: 10000-19999 words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-07
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-07 02:46:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 11,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8780173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reminiscence/pseuds/reminiscence
Summary: After the memories return and the two personalities fail to realign, Hachijo Tohya and meta-BATTLER battle it out for the right to live in the corpse of Battler Ushiromiya...or that's how it's supposed to go anyhow.





	1. Chapter 1

He began as an empty slate, but now he overflowed. The persona he'd created with Ikuko warred with the one who tried to rear itself up from the depths of his past –

And he refused it. He had a new place now, a new life. A peaceful place and it warred with the murky waters that slowly emerged…and, like a title wave, submerged him as well.

He knew how to swim. He kept his head afloat. But the truth was his present was feeble and the past was strong and one day it could – or would – pull him under its currents and he wouldn't be able to twist free again.

But still, he couldn't give in. He wanted to stay as Hachijo Tohya, wanted this peaceful life and shouldn't that tragic man of the past prefer to stay buried in his head as well?

And yet they fought, an invisible battle on a board that not even the two of them could see.

Until one day he cracked, and the border between reality and illusion revealed the game spread and the endless sorcerer was there to receive him.

.

**Game for a Memory  
** _Chapter 1_

.

There was no headache. Instead, his mind echoed hollowness as though it knew there should have been something except there wasn't. There always were headaches when he tried to remember, and the worst when he did and after that, when the memories began to flow unbidden into his mind despite how he tried to stop them…

The headache was the sign of his struggle, and it was no longer there in the darkness with him.

Was this freedom?

'This is where you gamble,' was the answer, 'for that freedom.'

He opened his eyes. The man before him was a haze but he still remembered.

And it was still impossible. 'I killed you.'

'You will try,' the man responded calmly as he sat, cape twirling behind him.

He remembered that red hair, but not the cape.

'I will try,' Tohya repeated. Yes, he would try, wouldn't he? 'Battler Ushiromiya.'

'Hachijo Tohya.' Battler's lips tweaked into a smirk. 'This here will be the battle between your past and your future. And to the victor goes the present: the right to live on into that future.'

The right to live on… and yet he remembered clawing his way up the road until it was too slick to crawl up anymore. And he remembered the flashing lights like the welcome boats in the river to guide his spirit on.

The one between them that won would live? But hadn't he already chosen to die?

Battler's smirk widened. 'Then lose,' he said. 'It's simple enough, isn't it? I'll get your body and you'll be free to die. Isn't that what you want?'

Yes, that was it. 'Fine,' he agreed. 'Let's play.'

Neither of them needed to ask what game it was.

.

He awoke alone and in a chapel.

From there, the setting quickly clicked into place. Rokkenjima island on the fifth of October, 1986. The cat-box of the Rokkenjima murders which cultivated the book they'd written together, he and Ikuko. But that book was just one of the many possible versions and even when the memories began to seep in, there was no telling truth in them to kill the possibilities.

So this was a challenge and his one and only chance for closure before the timer ran out?

Or he could simply allow the timer to run out, for wasn't that what it meant to surrender the game?

How long, he wondered? There was no clock in the chapel and he wasn't wearing a watch on his wrist. The sun was a poor approximation as well, since it hadn't risen yet or else had already set. Was it midnight? And the start of the day or the end?

But there was something about the end of the fifth day – of course. The explosion that wiped all evidence off the map and created the unsolvable cat-box that was the Rokkenjima murders. He knew that even before his past was a cat-box in and of itself. It was the famous island murders that had caught Ikuko's interest and prompted her to start writing the tale in the first place. The sequence of dominos that led to him opening the genie's wishing bottle so that the cat-box in his mind was no longer a cat-box but a reflection he could not accept as his own.

In the silence of the chapel, it clawed at him again. Searching fingers found nothing to grip but the unsoiled ground and he gripped at it and it wouldn't grip him back so the pads of his fingers tore and left rough lines beneath the dust. And inside him was the same battle, where he tried to grip that new him but the old one slipped in instead, and before he'd tried to grab the he he'd been before only to find it was impossible, that Battler Ushiromiya was the sun that was just too far away and yet it still brought its flames all too close –

'If you don't move, the game doesn't start,' said Battler Ushiromiya's voice from behind him.

He spun around and his dry lips stung and only then, in that moment of silence, did he hear the echoes of his fit. And it still clung to him, even if it slowly ebbed away.

The presence of Battler Ushiromiya in the flesh seemed to taper the one inside of him just a little bit.

But still he gasped for air like he'd been underwater until his lungs almost burst and his lips and throat both burned like he'd been breathing acid instead. He should know, really, how it felt to be drowning, almost drowned, but he still didn't remember that part. Maybe he'd never remember that part, assuming he was conscious at all. The waves might have carried him to land and then he'd walked, dripping wet and still drowning in his lungs until he'd collapsed, face down, upon the road.

But there was no road this time, nor water, nor anything to tread except memory and exposition and another persona. And himself, kneeling on the floor stained with disuse and new blood – blood that might even mark the beginning of the tragedy of Rokkenjima island…or else it's end.

He turned, slowly. There was no Battler Ushiromiya behind him. There was no-one, but the chapel door was open when it had been closed before. Inviting him outside, onto the island. Inviting him into the game of his moth-bitten memory and he wasn't even allowed to sit and wait for it to end without his hand?

He stood up shakily. Still, he wanted to sit and waste away and wait but what sort of desperate man would eventually crawl their way out…assuming Battler Ushiromiya didn't interrupt his self-battle once more. So he stumbled his way through the rows of pews and the heavy creaking door –

And then he froze, because that wasn't Rokkenjima island of October five after all, because there was smoke billowing upward and colouring the sky grey, and a glow where the picture of a mansion stood in his mind.

This was the sixth of October, some time after midnight and the island was aflame.

But then…

How was the chapel still standing, unsoiled? Why had he smelt no smoke at all? And what was the point of coming _here_ , to this point of time when the lid on the cat-box had already slammed closed.

'This is the game-board,' said Battler's amused voice from behind him again.

He was quicker this time to turn, and catch the phantom there.

'Why?' he asked. 'Why today? Why not yesterday?'

'Because it's always yesterday,' lamented the other, looking past him. The dark cape billowed with the smoke. The same smoke that stabbed at Tohya's eyes and made them water but Battler Ushiromiya didn't blink at all. 'Against you, I see no reason not to skip straight ahead to today.'

He didn't understand. Perhaps he was missing some key memory or other to understand but he knew enough. The two of them were on a ghost island now, and if there were any surviving souls that weren't already adrift on the ocean, they could only be he himself…or the island's only survivor, Eva Ushiromiya.

'So get going,' ordered Battler Ushiromiya. 'The game won't move unless you do.'

'Go where?' asked Tohya hazily but the man was gone again, vanished like an apparition into the smoke. And the island blurred around him. Everything but the chapel that still stood tall and unstained by the smoke (and stained instead by dust and the sisters to the blood under his nails).

He couldn't recall the layout of the island anyway. The mansion would have been in the centre or thereabouts, he presumed, but it was nothing but faintly glowing rubble now. And then there was the forest which covered most of the island and gave direction and landmark to nothing…and something else. Something buried in the forest canopy. But the forest was either ash or aflame and the smoke would only thicken in it all.

So the game was to answer whatever riddle had been posed to his deaf ears before he choked to death on the smoke or fried in the fire?

He laughed. And supposed burning would be a preferable death to drowning twice over, but neither of them would top the split-second decision (or even that) of throwing himself upon the road that had almost killed him and yet given him a second lease on life as well.

He picked a direction and walked. They were all the same, after all.


	2. Chapter 2

The mansion was just another vague memory, and in this case it didn't matter because it was no longer there.

Still, staring at the ruins that slowly smouldered, Hachijo Tohya wondered if that wasn't a terribly sad thought to nurture. This had been his home…somewhat. Or not. There was a seed of repulsion in this place as well and he wondered at that. A part of the past that wasn't his, that would never be his and he didn't need to know…

But another part of him was rolling tears, and the only way to understand would be to know.

There was still no headache and no welcome distraction from the clawing thoughts and so he did the only thing he could. He distracted himself, walked into the thickest part of the smoke until he could barely see at all and could barely breathe as well – and because if he couldn't breathe, those uncontrollable litanies couldn't dance with his tongue either.

And he would faint and fall and roll long before he died of smoke inhalation, and would the game world even let him die such a lax death? He remembered gunshots and blood, lots of blood, and he could only assume that was the Rokkenjima murders the dead island had grown so famous for. But most of the specifics were still lost to him. Just bodies, laid out like a procession and the mansion blurring as he ran through each and every room, searching – and finding nothing but another dead body waiting for him. And the faces blurred together until he couldn't work out who he hadn't seen but knew who he had… All the cousins definitely, though for some reason he'd been relieved as well…

Someone ran through the smoke: a small someone with pink baubles in her hair. And then there was only shades of white spelling nothing in particular and Tohya wondered how he could have known those baubles were pink, or indeed they were baubles at all. But the image was too solid in his mind now, and he couldn't doubt it. Another memory from his past that teased him without refrain – and didn't he have enough of those already?

But the little girl wouldn't leave him alone, and it wasn't Maria because Maria had been bigger than that or smaller than that and there'd been a solid six years in between. It was someone else. Someone who was constantly in his shadow, constantly on his mind – and yet still so far away. Why was everybody he knew so far away?

Well, he knew the answer to that question. Hachijo Tohya only knew people aside from Ikuko and Battler Ushiromiya through one or the other of them. And if this was a shadow of Battler Ushiromiya, then the shadow that was far from sight but never far from mind would be…

Ange Ushiromiya, who'd been absent from Rokkenjima in the fateful October of 1986. Not considered a survivor of the tragedy for her absence, but she still bore the weight of it on her shoulders and in her name. A position no-one can envy, he'd thought, except she had money, both old and new, and that was enough cause for many a person.

Ange Ushiromiya… Not the first time he'd remembered her until she slipped away again like the shadow she was. And that was another quarrel with the Battler in his mind, because she was all alone and he was keeping his brother away from her… And yet was it not also true that her brother was dead and he was a perfect stranger who was only now discovering pieces of the truth that could weave as good a forgery as the others. And that was a quarrel he chose to lose, to refuse.

The phantom of Ange Ushiromiya vanished into the smoke and he did not chase her.

.

He wandered through the smoke. There had been a mansion here till a few hours earlier and he slowly put it together in his mind. Still there were blank spots everywhere and what stood out the most was the blood. A dead body in almost every room he checked to find – or else the empty rooms just blurred together in his mind. And finally was Natsumi and he just stood there, because there was almost no-one left. Eva, Shannon and Kanon. And the witch of the island is there ever was one.

But at least that part of him had not changed with time. Neither Battler Ushiromiya nor Hachijo Tohya believed in magic and that was the quarrel Ikuko had laughingly made the plot of their novel. A novel that he would never draft for her, and that she perhaps would never even write. Or perhaps she would, in a twisted rendering of his memory and his memories were twisted enough already. Twisted and thorny like a rosebush who tightened his noose the more he struggled in it.

But a dead mansion told him nothing, and when he felt the simmering coals burn his feet, he began to walk again.

.

He could hear voices. He followed them and found himself at the wharf and there was a boat heading out to sea. It was a dream elopement on the docks. The man with red hair sweeping the woman with blonde right off her feet. The sorcerer and the witch. But why a sorcerer? And why a witch?

'And what do you know?' said Battler Ushiromiya's amused voice. 'Looks like our minds still work alike.'

'How do you mean?' asked a tired Tohya. 'And what exactly is the purpose of this setting?'

'Haven't you seen?' returned the other. 'This is Rokkenjima of the sixth of October, as you've already surmised. And there is the death of an eternal witch and the birth of a sorcerer.'

Tohya did not understand at all, but still he watched. The boat drifted out to sea with two – and then with a ripple it emptied and there was no-one.

The boat he'd been on that capsized.

The boat Battler Ushiromiya had been on. Except it wasn't upside down and there'd been another, the woman, the witch, on it.

'Beatrice, the eternal witch,' said Battler Ushiromiya.

'Beatrice who claimed responsibility for the murders but who did not truly exist,' replied Tohya. 'But even the witch died, when no-one remembered her. Died until some whisper of the island being cursed arose, and then she resurrected.'

'And so magic is the word of mouth, the cat box that spirals out of control,' surmises Battler. 'Of course it is. It is a construct, after all, and not a true nature unless you yourself are a believer.'

'I am not,' said Hachijo Tohya.

But it was unnecessary to say, because he had once been Battler Ushiromiya and wasn't that the entire basis of this mystery novel?

'Then shall I take Beato's place and prove you wrong?' asked Battler, before shaking his head. 'Ah, but that is not the purpose of this little interim of ours.'

'Interim.' Tohya tasted the word on his tongue.

'But of course,' said the other, 'for I am no longer Battler Ushiromiya as well, but BATTLER, the endless Sorcerer.'

.

The sorcerer was born out at sea, where there was no-one but a dying woman or a dying witch to bear witness to that birth. The origins of Hachijo Tohya are, similarly, a cat-box, and so is the birth of the endless Sorcerer. The tales wrought around the witch and likewise, but that box is being searched for and they may still find it, and when the lid comes off, the truth behind the tragedy of Rokkenjima island will be revealed.

But who would solve the puzzles that centred around Battler Ushiromiya? He was just another of the island's victims, after all. One of so many people and why would he be more or less special than the rest? Only Eva Ushiromiya and only because she somehow escaped that place with her life intact and the world knew it.

But there was the boat and there was Battler Ushiromiya and the golden-haired wish disappearing into the depths.

And how long had it been, since they disappeared into those depths?

 _If you don't move, the game doesn't start._ So the endless Sorcerer had said and so it was, but was the game merely frozen now or was there nothing more to see in this scene save the endless waves.

But though he tried to move away, the waves were always there and always plain, and the ripples never quite faded away.


	3. Chapter 3

He couldn't seem to move away from the shore. It was like one of those pocket spaces where a small scene seemed endless and was endlessly there.

Beatrice, the Endless Witch. And yet even she had met her end because she never showed up again. Aside from the stories that immortalised her: tales of the Rokkenjima incident that were as pretentious and false as the next and the one in his mind was the closest and the furthest as well, because he could never write it.

And maybe Eva Ushiromiya's was equally close and equally far away and for the same reasons as well.

But the shore wouldn't leave, no matter how he wandered from its perimeter. The game didn't move – and so there was only one more choice: to head into the water itself.

His heart thumped noisily and painfully at that. He'd almost drowned after all and that was the first and last thing he recalled. But the two sets of memories within him clawed for action. Inaction made them quarrel louder and that festering panic in his soul only grew louder and stronger as well. He didn't want them to fight until they destroyed each other and this life of his and yet they tended towards exactly that. And so he couldn't sit still. He hadn't lasted long at all in the chapel until the smell of his own blood dragged him deeper –

And even the ocean choking him at night was more welcome than that.

He took a deep breath, and then turned around. He'd left the pier long ago but it didn't take him nearly as long to return. And he didn't bother trying to understand the physics behind that because it was what it was. The matches between Battler and Beatrice were centred on exactly that and yet one couldn't apply science and the laws of mystery to a dream or to illusions. That was another layer. The Rokkenjima tragedy was certainly no dream, but this? The temple under the sea –

He paused and stared out into the water he was adrift in. The temple under the sea… What was that? He remembered a glimpse of it and yet it fit with nothing. He hadn't gone diving in the Rokkenjima waters. There had been a shipwreck around the same time as the murders but that meant nothing either. The missing people… Rokkenjima was a closet of skeletons of the Ushiromiya family but it hadn't been an outsider that ended them. That would have been too simple, and too kind.

The internal strife was what kept the tale alive. And Eva's silence… She who could have condemned anyone but her own guilt and the others had been laid out in a row like dominoes but not her, never her and the omission spoke volumes and more of her guilt until something in his gut had twisted and turned her into a witch equitable to Beatrice the eternal witch…

And suddenly, Beatrice was there, in the boat with him, crying and smiling and holding…was that an ingot? The fabled gold of the Ushiromiyas that had been their fortune and their destruction as well? Her red dress was deeper than the sunrise that framed her, and brighter than the dark blood that stained her. And the ocean was swallowing all of that. Swallowing her whole and when had that happened? Did she jump and fall?

And then he was in the water as well and he lost her – or perhaps he'd been in the water all along and she was saving him, or he was saving her – He was all muddled again and half of him screamed to swim that way and grasp her and which way was that? Deeper? Or towards the surface?

There was a glitter of light behind her. Was that the temple that had flickered to the forefront of his mind before vanishing again – or the rising sun that signed the lease to his survival?

.

He had a strange dream. He had that, sometimes, and that dream couldn't be explained by science or mysteries because there was far too much magic in it. Ange was there sometimes and that was a thing in itself: Ange the age she was now, when she'd been only six years old during the Rokkenjima incident and he was the near but not quite adult he'd been back then.

No, that wasn't him. That was Battler Ushiromiya and that person was dead now, was dying now – Even time had been muddled up but that didn't matter. Battler Ushiromiya died in the Rokkenjima incident and he was Hachijo Tokya.

And it was Battle Ushiromiya who transcended his own mortality in this moment and became the sorcerer, who played the endless games with Beatrice the Eternal Witch, who was that form blinking in the middle of the playing room and then taking his seat and fighting…fighting for what? No matter who won and who lost, the game went on for eternity until the spectators grew bored and freed them from the bottle they'd wandered into… Or perhaps that was a cat box as well. A cat box with a bottleneck.

'And so I was born,' said the Endless Sorcerer from behind him.

Tohya was breathing again. They were under the ocean and his heart slowly calmed, and the division of his mind settled back into place once more. The Endless Sorcerer was behind him with his red hair and black minted cape, slimmer and fuller and yet also less real because he'd transcended his mortal existence and mortal plane.

And Tohya was the skeleton who somehow managed to crawl to the shore and survive, wasn't he?

'And the endless game began,' the Endless Sorcerer continued. 'But all we wanted was for it to end. But we fought on anyway. Fought because we could do nothing else, trapped in this place with the cat box that was once Rokkenjima at our feet and still locked. And I…became a cat box as well.'

'A man without memories that could be anyone and no-one,' Tohya continued. He understood that. He knew that. 'A blank slate…or Schrodinger's cat box.'

'Ironic, isn't it?' the Endless Sorcerer smiled. 'But the truth is that there's nothing endless. Beatrice couldn't keep on fighting forever so she gave up and the title of the Endless Witch was mine – or Endless Sorcerer, as it is.' He looked down at himself. 'And then I fought for a different purpose, not to deny Beatrice's existence and find the person truly responsible for my family dying in these endless cycles – ' He laughed. 'I've used that word again, haven't I?'

Tohya didn't answer. It was a rhetorical question anyway. Their eternals and their endlessness were drowning them just as the different people they'd become.

'In any case.' And the Endless Sorcerer smiled again. 'We're in the middle of our own eternal game. There's no Beatrice here.'

'The Endless Sorcerer against Hachijo Tohya,' Tohya snapped, teeth gritted in frustration. 'I know. He could not – would not – allow this faux pas to go on forever. But hadn't he already made his choice before this game had even begun? Then what was the question he was to answer. The Endless Sorcerer had asked questions but rhetorical ones. Nothing that demanded he answer – and he'd asked no question either.

Perhaps he'd been a fool in that he'd walked into a game thinking he knew the rules when he'd missed the most important one.

So what was it? Beatrice's questions was one and from it stemmed the debate of man vs. magic. She tried to prove the murders at Rokkenjima could not be explained by any mortal means while Battler Ushiromiya tried to do exactly that. But that wasn't the question: whether magic existed or not. It was a means: a stimulator of conversation, a provoker of arguments. But the true question had been something else.

But he didn't know what it was. The Endless Sorcerer no doubt knew. All the games that were echoing shadows in his memories were the true memories of that meta-person who'd transcended his own murder and the murder of his family. In there, surely some of those had reached endgames, where the question had been posed and the clock started… But by that same logic it meant he hadn't reached the answer if the next round came on…

But that was incorrect as well, because the fact that they were playing now and without Beatrice meant that something had somewhere changed. 'Did you win?' he wondered. 'Did you find the answer to Beatrice's question?'

'I did,' replied the Endless Sorcerer, 'but it is not quite a victory yet. The prize isn't quite in my grasp.'

'From that, I'll assume the prize has something to do with me.' Tohya gripped his shirt at the end of that. His heart pained suddenly. Screamed for something – and then the memories of Rokkenjima weren't at an arm's length but clouding his mind again. 'I am…my own person.'

'I know,' said the Endless Sorcerer. 'It's why we're in this game.'


	4. Chapter 4

He awoke in the forest again. Shadows of flames flickered through the trees but they told him nothing. The mansion could be in any direction. So could the shore. But there was something underneath him. Pattering like rain – and yet there'd been no rain in Rokkenjima that night that might have saved them. The storm was out at sea where he couldn't see through the canopy of trees. And it didn't really matter because he was being picked up and moved to different squares like a chess piece and he was both screaming internally and tired of it all.

But collapsing into a heap wouldn't move things along. He could only watch these scenes as though they were more than curiosities – and to half of him, they were more than curiosities. That was the problem. Those two parts of him were not reconciled. They would never reconcile. Battle Ushiromiya was a ghost of the past that wouldn't settle, and Hachijo Tohya was a zombie of the present who'd died long ago. Restless dead who couldn't cease to move and wasn't that a pity? They might've had freedom otherwise instead of these fragmented memories of another life and that other life quarrelling for control. And yet…what was death? Was there an afterlife or a cessation of thought or reincarnation or one of those many theories of after-death that lived? Death was itself a cat-box… perhaps even the mother of all cat-boxes. Only the dead themselves knew what happened and the dead man told no tales.

And mystery writers tried to uncover the truth amidst their theories for all the cat-boxes in the world except that one.

And he was just the same. He didn't care at all to find out what lay beyond the moment of death.

But still… He hoped it was silence. The silence that would stifle those plaguing echoes. That would allow him to shut his eyes and ears to this place, to these shadowed memories and the life of a person he'd once been but no longer was. He may as well died and been reincarnated – or perhaps he had and that moment of black waters in between was the secret to the cat-box of death he could never tell the world. The Rokkenjima cat-box on the other hand was one he could tell the world, if he ever pierced the memories of Battler Ushiromiya together… If he ever wanted to.

He didn't. Doing that would mean accepting too much, sacrificing too much. Hachijo Tohya was too fragile an existence to do that.

Hachijo Tohya had fallen fighting exactly that… and drifted unto the shores of Rokkenjima.

Or perhaps he had died and the chapel was his funeral scene. After all, the ocean of life didn't flow straight into the chapel.

But that didn't matter right then. The game was still in progress and he wasn't sure what his objective was but he did know that the Endless Sorcerer was a kind game-master. He knew…or he remembered. Remembered the despair Beatrice cultivated. Remembered the despair BATTLER cultivated as well…though his despair was so naïve, so unintentional. A moment's kindness or pity or naivety led to a child's game twisting into an awful tragedy…

And didn't Ange Ushiromiya deny those games as well, where one might have had the happiest tragedy if only she'd allowed it to take form?

And there was more that science and the laws of mystery could not explain. Illusions or delusions or hallucinations that seemed more real than the actual incident themselves, all born from the black hole where the truth slumbered and that made the question of whether magic existed to be all the more worthless… Because one could just claim it a dream and the argument stopped right there.

But that didn't help him leave the dream, nor forget it.

There was still the forest, and the smoke that rose from it and coloured the night sky grey.

.

He wandered through the forest. Unlike the shore, there was no particular landmarks that deep in and he had no idea what he was looking for. Eventually he found it though. A hole in the ground as though there'd once been a well… and yet, what did a small island like this need a well for?

Perhaps it was the underground passage. The passage that was said to lead to both the buried gold and the second mansion where the lord of the island had kept his mistress. A dark passage riddled with traps or a light one rimmed with lanterns? Which was it because he saw both and neither in his memories, and the hole in the ground gave nothing away at all.

He climbed down slowly. There were footholds and he followed them, slipping once or twice along the way. The tunnels curved and slunk away into shadows and nothing, memory or otherwise, told him which way to go. He was wandering blind again, blind with two sets of memories to guide him and it was laughable, frustrating and painful too.

His fingers dig into his palms in an effort to stop himself from spiralling right down that road again, and he just picked a random direction and strode on.

.

It was called Kuwadorian, Tohya recalled. And it was supposedly the home of Kinzo's mistress, or the witch of the island, or perhaps the two of them were one and the same and not at all. It didn't really matter. The popular versions of the tale told that Eva Ushiromiya sought refuge here, in the quiet abandoned place on the far edge of the island where even the explosion hadn't quite reached… It was the only place on the island that was still standing. That and the port but there was no shelter to be found at the port.

No-one had considered the missing boat to be of any importance or concern. Perhaps they expected it had been cast adrift, or there hadn't been a boat parked there at all (because, after all, they'd arrived on a cruise and had been scheduled to leave on one as well) or that it had been Eva to take the boat… But that in itself suggested there must be at least two, or else Eva and Battler had left together.

He shook his head. That was the mystery lover in him, trying to puzzle out the cat-box. The human who wanted a peaceful life wanted any mystery but that one, the one that dug up far too much – and yet the truth was still buried beneath those dregs, wasn't it? He still had an incomplete picture, and was that the fault of the incomplete memories or something else aside? Because he saw the recreation of the boat scene and there had been no Eva there. And yet how, then, had she left Kuwadorian? Why would the port have held more than one emergency boat to begin with?

And why had Eva run to Kuwadorian? How had she known the blast radius would not include it? Why had she not made straight for the boat so she could be out at sea, unbound by the land and have a higher chance for survival with a blast of unknown radius imminent?

Then again, had Eva known about the blast beforehand at all, or had she fled for some other reason? There were too many questions and many a person had posed them to the new head of the Ushiromiya family…and not one of them had been answered. Even when her name was slandered across newspapers and mystery novels alike, she had not spoken in her guilt or in her defence. And the public took her silence to mean her guilt and ran with it.

And as far as he went… She was the only one he didn't see after he left the guest house.

And why was that? He still didn't recall but it didn't really matter either… or perhaps it did. Perhaps the answer was there: in that window of time before the bodies of the Ushiromiya family was laid out like a pack of dominoes and then the escape from a burning grave began.

Kuwadorian had never been in the picture. Not for him.

But Eva Ushiromiya claimed it her refuge in the one and only statement she ever gave of the Ushiromiya incident. And the forest was choking on smoke and the mansion still stood, was still safe. And empty. Completely empty.

Or he wasn't looking in the right places, because he found her finally, curled up near the underground entrance (and how had he missed her when he'd emerged? Unless she'd been behind him) and crying the names of her husband and son…

And that didn't look like a woman who'd just murdered them at all.

And yet… He couldn't reconcile them with that image, either. Perhaps Battler Ushiromiya had more fond memories of her, but to Hachijo Tohya, she was the living embodiment of the Rokkenjima massacre that had split his soul and given birth to him. Should he be thankful for that birth? Perhaps. But the existence of Battler Ushiromiya stirring within him was giving him a life as though a man possessed by the devil. And that may seem melodramatic to anyone else, but they had never struggled themselves so completely, had never been faced with such strong denial of their own memories and their own souls… Even the amnesiac had it easier, and often afterwards he'd wished those memories hadn't drifted ashore at all.

And now… Did it matter whether Eva Ushiromiya was innocent or guilty as the public screamed? Did it matter what slumbered in that cat-box? To Battler Ushiromiya it mattered, but Hachijo Tohya sought just one thing: freedom.

'Some call ignorance freedom,' said the voice of the Endless Sorcerer behind. 'Others call knowledge that instead.'

'So you will answer all the puzzles and then leave me in peace?' asked Tohya.

He didn't expect an answer. They were still in the middle of their match, after all.


	5. Chapter 5

This time, when he closed his eyes and opened them, he was exactly where he’d been. Kuwadorian still surrounded him in its stilted and dusted beauty. Kinzo, if indeed he’d built it and it wasn’t another embellishment that was born of silence and spread, had wasted no finery and yet the finery was wasted and who knew how long it had sat idle for? The placed had been lived in, once upon a time, but for how long and how long had it sat empty for afterwards? Eva was here for a time, but barely a night and what could she have done to unsettle the dust? Very little, he imagined. This settled dust told of a longer, deeper tale – but that wasn’t the mystery he was interested in, unless it unearthed the witch of the island –

No, that was Battler Ushiromiya’s wish and even that wish was dampened now, as though the identity of the witch _had_ been unearthed, somewhere, in the island filled with foliage and fire and blood.

The witch drowned in the sea weighed down by gold. Was that a retelling of the Wizard of Oz on a wider scale? Was she the wicked witch of the west that required an entire ocean’s worth of water to douse her as opposed to a household bucket? Or was that the price of a human who’d lived too long in abandonment and despair and who chose to finally throw their lives away in a place where a tiny bit of hope had still drifted.

Or had the witch given up Battler Ushiromiya as dead as well?

Somehow, that scene after the boat spoke otherwise. The pair that sunk. The peaceful expression turning into sudden agony and maybe it hadn’t been because the air had run out at that point and reason had been overcome by the instinct to keep on living…

Was he the same, then? Even the person who jumped from a building of their own free will, watching their own body fall before them before it splatters on the ground, might feel regret before the impact… even when it’s far too late?

Is this the moment of his regret, then? Someone said it once, didn’t they? That the hardest battle was to keep on living…

But here was his problem. Whose life was he supposed to live because he couldn’t do both of them. He couldn’t even do one of them. But at least one of them was a possibility.

Who would win? Hachijo Tohya or Battler Ushiromiya? And where was the fight, because to him it seemed to be all about Battler Ushiromiya and Hachijo Tohya was only the carrier of the soul.

.

He left Kuwadorian after combing it through one more time. Eva Ushiromiya was still on her hands and knees and crying her son’s and husband’s name… And this time, with the memories of Battler Ushiromiya sitting quietly, Hachijo Tohya felt his heart go out to her. No doubt a lot of people cried like that, or near like that. Maybe only one other person had the right to cry with those same tears: the tears of losing one’s closest family, and that would be Ange Ushiromiya. But family wasn’t the only thing in the world. There were acquaintances of many kinds: friends, classmates, love interests, coworkers… Many people who were touched by many other people. Eighteen people died and their impact rippled onwards and outwards – or that’s how it should have gone. Those ripples wound up masked anyway, by the general public who saw only a mystery that needed to be solved.

And perhaps it wouldn’t have even become such a tale if it hadn’t been for those mystery bottles. They might have considered it a family tragedy and that would be the end of the matter, but the bottles suggested premeditation and suddenly there was a conspiracy to be uncovered.

There was that and the final confirmation of gold. And it wasn’t long underground before Hachijo Tohya found himself standing in the room of gold.

.

The room was both familiar and unfamiliar. He assumed from that that only the Endless Sorcerer had ever seen the room and not the mortal Battler Ushiromiya. Or else Battler had only ever seen it in a dream and never in reality. It didn’t really matter. It was wondrous in itself. Wondrous and unreal and utterly useless. A thousand gold ignots… Or not a thousand, exactly. The witch had been carrying one and drowned with it, and who knew of the thousand there were rumoured to be, how many had been moved or converted into current cash… Or if there’d even been a thousand initially. Who knew, and who really cared? To the victor went the spoils but the police that raided Kuwadorian had found nothing except what Eva Ushiromiya had been carrying herself…

And maybe that was how Eva Ushiromiya had made it off the island, if Beatrice and Battler had taken the one and only boat. What had she thought then, curled up upstairs as she cried for her family? Had she tried to escape but realised the boat was gone and wondered who could have taken it? Or had she stayed cooped up in that mansion until the police raided it days later, trying to pierce the island back together.

He sighed and looked away from the gold – and there were the bodies. He froze.

No children. Only adults. Rosa. Hideyoshi. Natsuhi. Krauss. And blood that could belong to any of the adults of the Ushiromiya family not there: Kinzo, Eva, Kyrie, Rudolf… or Beatrice.

His head splintered and his hands immediately went searching for migraine tables even as his knees collapsed and his mind caught up with the fact that he wasn’t at home and Ikuko wouldn’t come running with them and a glass of water as soon as she heard him fall. Inside his body, Battler Ushiromiya screamed anew, and the scream of the present was mixed with the pass and the detached Tohya who could only think about the physical pain also saw with surprising clarity that Battler Ushiromiya _had_ seen this room of gold – because he’d seen the bodies. And he’d seen them all except Eva Ushiromiya’s. That’s how he’d thought her to be the instigator of it all.

But Tohya now wondered at that. The way she’d mourned her husband and child didn’t make her look like their murderer. Was it even as simple as a single person being responsible for it all? The witch Beatrice sunk to the bottom of the ocean with a single gold ingot. Eva Ushiromiya holed herself up in Kuwadorian. Battler Ushiromiya had drifted ashore without his memories or a hint of his identity and that had set him free from the tragic curse that was Rokkenjima until the memories came swimming back…

Did Eva Ushiromiya keep her silence because nothing had set her free? Was her anger towards the vultures who smelt blood and came swooping, to people like he and Ikuko who saw the message bottles and wanted to pierce together the tale that surrounded them? Or maybe…

There was Ange Ushiromiya as well. Maybe the aunt simply wanted to protect the niece from the truth.

The Battler inside of him wailed at Ange’s name, just as he screamed at the corpses. Tohya simply knelt, eyes barely seeing, body folded into itself like a puppet whose strings had been cut but limbs not quite splayed. He was detached from it all again. Watching the events as though he was watching a movie and there was some heart-wrenching scene on screen that wasn’t quite resonating with him. And even if the Ushiromiyas had been complete strangers instead of the family of his old soul, who wouldn’t be horrified at such a scene as the one laid out in front of him?

Except he wasn’t. Or half-wasn’t. The Tohya part of him just stared blankly while pain burst in his skull until that, and only that, was too much to bear and he curled inward.

He didn’t know when he drifted off after that. He wasn’t in the room of gold when the throbbing in his head finally subsided. He wasn’t in Kuwadorian either. It was somewhere he’d seen recently though, and it took a moment longer to pierce it together. The chapel after he’d fallen into the headlights.

Why even was there a chapel upon the island? It made sense now to be a construct from the Endless Sorcerer to mourn the fallen and his predecessor but it didn’t explain why it had been there before. Unless it hadn’t.

Except there, above him, was inexplicable proof that it had. Unless of course, the space had warped to accommodate it. There was a portrait of Beatrice where the door should have been and that hadn’t been there before. It couldn’t have been there before because the chapel would need a door: a way in and out.

But hadn’t the chapel also been the setting of a closed room scenario? He couldn’t recall which. It didn’t really matter. It gave little proof or speculation. The closed room scenario in itself was part of the dream world, or the meta world. But the other wall that opened up into the underground… Was that the path that led to the gold? Or was that simply the open exit in which his body had moved here by itself.

Did it even matter? The layout of Rokkenjima wasn’t the puzzle he came to solve.

Then what was?

The Endless Sorcerer was suddenly there, offering a handkerchief to him. He stared at it, confused. The mirror image of his past smiled and gently dabbed at his cheeks.

Hachijo Tohya might have been clear eyed, but Battler Ushiromiya was still crying.


	6. Chapter 6

The Endless Sorcerer was still there when the other half of Tohya had slipped out of conscious awareness once more. Tohya confessed himself mildly surprised. The Endless Sorcerer hadn’t done so yet. Had explained very little but only gave hints and commands that stopped the game from stalling entirely. Had he waited because he thought Tohya would not recall the next hint until now? But that was incorrect, wasn’t it? Battler Ushiromiya might have been elsewise occupied, but Hachijo Tohya had disassociated from that and – when the pain had ebbed away – with a clear mind.

                ‘Well?’ he asked, after the silence cushioned them.

                ‘Well,’ the Endless Sorcerer mimicked. ‘What do you think?’

                ‘What’s to think about?’ Tohya returned. ‘The Battler Ushiromiya part of me is getting his head straight, while the Hachijo Tohya part is looking at the mystery at a somewhat different angle, but this isn’t about the mystery at all, right?’

                ‘Right,’ said the Endless Sorcerer. ‘The truth of the mystery lies elsewhere, and the key will eventually fall into your hands. Whether that’s you as Battler Ushiromiya or Hachijo Tohya…’ He shrugged and smiled. ‘Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter, after the fact. Our little game will have finished by then.’

                ‘Will it have?’ Tohya wondered. ‘I wonder if time is a factor at all, aside from in my head.’

                ‘Somewhat of a factor,’ the Endless Sorcerer allowed. ‘And it’s not just you. It’s me as well.’

                ‘The Endless Sorcerer, the mystery draft-writer and the secret survivor of Rokkenjima.’ Tohya snorted. It sounded a bit ridiculous when he put it like that, but it was still the truth of the matter. ‘As for the time, have we had too little or too much of it?’

                ‘A little of both, perhaps,’ said the Endless Sorcerer. ‘That is the meaning of “eternal”, or “endless”, after all. Until the victor happily hands over her spoils because she’s tired of fighting with the same outcome every time, and then another fool comes along and resurrects her so the endless battle begins anew…’

                ‘The Endless Witch Beatrice, and the Endless Sorcerer Battler,’ said Tohya. ‘A battle in truth, or is it the subconscious despair of being unable to save her.’

                ‘Then I am that guilt and desire personified?’ the Endless Sorcerer asked. ‘And ultimately we arrive back at the question as to what is magic and what is mystery…’ He laughed. ‘But not ultimately. We’ve veered off the topic, instead.’

                ‘We have,’ agreed Tohya. ‘And the mystery draft-writer is only superficially curious. And Battler is tired.’

                ‘They say the journey a thousand kilometres long begins with a single step,’ the Endless Sorcerer replied. ‘Or perhaps it’s not the metric system they use in that saying. Probably not.’ He was still smiling. They were drifting onto a tangent, after all. An irrelevant spiel… because which of them really cared what system of measurement was used in an old proverb? ‘But if a journey is a thousand kilometres long in a straight line, what do you think happens with a single misstep?’

                ‘You veer off course.’ That was obvious, really.

                ‘And if you take two?’

                ‘They might equal,’ Tohya said, a little thoughtfully. ‘They may cancel each other out – but what are the chances if each step being equal and opposing so perfectly? On a long journey, even being 0.01 degrees out would lead to reaching a vastly different point.’

                ‘Exactly that,’ said the Endless Sorcerer, ‘assuming the road in question is a straight line with no landmarks, of course. But where would you find a road like that? In the middle of a desert? In an ocean?’

When he’d drifted, without memories or sense nor direction? Probably.

                ‘But roads in our modern area have signs, and buildings on the side, or mountains on the horizon…’ He trailed off. ‘A slight misstep is far less concerning there because there are beacons you can follow back to the path. But that only holds true to physical paths. What of the more abstract ones?’

Part of Tohya wondered why they were even having such a philosophical discussion, but he entertained it anyway. ‘Paths with clear plans and endpoints and milestones along the way are equivalent to ones with signposts, I imagine,’ he said. ‘As for the more abstract ones, the ones we humans call our life dreams…’

                ‘They may well be in the middle of a desert or ocean,’ the Endless Sorcerer agreed. ‘For all that we think we’re on the right path towards it…or not.’

                ‘So what?’ asked Tohya, climbing to his feet. ‘What does any of that have to do with now?’

                ‘What indeed?’ asked the Endless Sorcerer. ‘To Hachijo Tohya, you mean? I should think the meaning towards Battler Ushiromiya is obvious.’

He was right, of course. The retellings of the Rokkenjima stirred up a hornet’s nest, so to speak, and Battler wanted the truth and the ability to mourn all that had been lost in it – but which of those had been more important? The truth? No, somehow he didn’t think so, for all the endless battle had been about the truth.

Battler was a quiet, dim, echo of memory now. It was Tohya, all Tohya, who spoke to the Endless Sorcerer now.

                ‘Peace,’ he said finally. ‘I want peace.’

And maybe he was speaking for Battler Ushiromiya there as well. Speaking for the both of them. One thing he was sure they agreed on. Was sure they both wanted.

                ‘What sort of peace?’ the Endless Sorcerer pushed. ‘For some, peace is a true death. For others, it’s to resolve unanswered questions, or heal unanswered hurts. And for others still, to forget the past and start afresh…’

And it was no longer that simple. ‘Starting afresh became impossible,’ said Tohya slowly. ‘Perhaps, as long as the possibility of those memories existed, it was always impossible.’

                ‘Possibility and impossibility,’ said the Endless Sorcerer. ‘Does the Battler Ushiromiya part of you recall the witch Bernkastel?’

                ‘Bernkastel,’ Tohya repeated, frowning. ‘Perhaps. Nothing specific.’

                ‘Another witch,’ the Endless Sorcerer explained, ‘and like Beatrice and I, a human once upon a time until her desires transcended her death. She is the witch of miracles, who can search though a sea of endless fragments and stumble into the best-case scenario so long as the possibility of it occurring is not zero.’

                ‘A witch of probability then,’ said Tohya, wondering if he should really be amused. But there was no conflicting response from within his heart. Nothing to offset it. ‘A gambling witch.’

The Endless Sorcerer seemed amused as well. ‘They were all gamblers,’ he said. ‘Featherine, Lambdadelta, Bernkastel… Featherine you know, of course.’

                ‘Should I?’ asked Tohya, who’d never heard the name before.

The Endless Sorcerer chuckled at that. ‘You wound know her better as Hachijo Ikuko,’ he said, and at the dumfounded look he received in return, explained: ‘The Rokkenjima incident has several layers, after all… regardless of whether they were born of human imagination or gave birth to the added complexity of the tale. Beatrice is a firm presence in all the fragments, as Bernkastel would call them, and so am I.’

                ‘As Battler Ushiromiya or the Endless Sorcerer?’ asked Tohya rhetorically.

                ‘Which indeed,’ the Endless Sorcerer replied. ‘But the other players, they are less well known and presumed. The mystery writer in decline who found a message bottle that sparked her muse and the muse of many others. The girl on the shipwreck off the coast of Rokkenjima who, it turned out, had not floated into the massacre after all. And then there are other tales that may or may not wind together with this one: a miko and a major in the army in a far off Japanese town…’

                ‘Hinamizawa,’ said Tohya. Naturally, he’d heard of that mystery as well, even if too sparsely and too late. ‘The curse of Oyashiro. Another mystery with many theories until the truth came out… Or, at least, a full and solid explanation that didn’t rely on magic to fill the gaps.’

                ‘And yet, if magic can be proven to exist, the entire “truth” falls apart. And the same can be said of many truths. The truth of what happened here is one of them.’

                ‘Perhaps,’ said Tohya, ‘however as the truth is not on display at the moment, it’s a bit of a moot point.’

                ‘True enough.’ The Endless Sorcerer closed his eyes and sighed. ‘What now?’ he asked. ‘You’ve been quiet.’

Tohya rather thought he’d been rather talkative, but perhaps the Endless Sorcerer was now addressing the other life inside of him. And it didn’t answer. ‘There is a difference between accepting because one is simply tired of fighting or not in a state of mind in which they can fight,’ Tohya said, after the pause. ‘And accepting because it is something they truly believe, from the bottom of their heart.’

                ‘That is true.’ The Endless Sorcerer smiled softly. ‘And yet, can you find understanding at all if you are constantly locked in battle?’

Tohya snorted at that. ‘It was a long and needless farce.’

                ‘Perhaps it was long,’ the Endless Sorcerer accepted, ‘but it was certainly not needless. Tell me, Hachijo Tohya, what will you do when faced with the headlights now? Your battle with your past and your future has left its peak and reached its trough. Perhaps things will stay like that. Perhaps the two sides of you will clash once again, clash until you reach that high pitch once more –‘

                ‘In which case, should I expect you again?’ asked Tohya dryly. ‘In any case, don’t take me for a fool. I’m well aware this isn’t a trough in any sense of the word. Closer to the average, but it’s not quite that as well.’

                ‘Not quite,’ the Endless Sorcerer agreed, ‘but close enough.’


	7. Chapter 7

This time, he awoke to headlights, and his body was scrambling away from them before his mind quite processed what it saw. The car screeched to a halt and the next moments were a mess of confusion with the babbling driver, Ikuko running down the road in her slippers and him staring at the overcast sky, processing it all.

He wasn't too surprised, in retrospect, to find himself waking up in a hospital next. There was no drip, at least. Just the usual monitoring equipment and a few extra things for special cases like him. Heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, oxygen saturation… and then there was telemetry and the EEG and, as always, he found himself staring at the brainwaves because the rest of his body was fine but his brain would never be.

How many doctors had they gone to? How many operations had they tried, and yet there'd been a wall between his past and his future that he couldn't overcome. And now that wall had sunken and thinned: done by a dream or a pocket space in the world where medicine and the advanced technology of the current times were powerless. But how long would this peace in slumber last? How long before the Battler Ushiromiya within him began to assert himself once more and what should he do about it? That problem – the main problem, really – had not been solved.

If he wanted to be frank about it, the only thing that interim had accomplished was giving him a bit of breathing space… And who else could honestly say they needed some time off from their own _soul?_ Then again, the question of the soul was metaphysical. Just like the existence of that meta-BATTLER, the Endless Sorcerer, and the witch of the island that was Beatrice. Just like those memories that made little sense otherwise… Because as much as dreams are a possibility, he could hardly expect fleeting dreams to give such a deep impression.

On the other hand, his brain was so screwed up that the best neurologists in the world had little idea of what to make of parts of it, and had no way in the least of fixing it, so maybe this new brain of his _was_ more partial to fleeting dreams than concrete facts. Hachijo Tohya's fleeting dreams anyway, otherwise he'd be suggesting that Battler Ushiromiya had pre-warning of the events that had occurred on Rokkenjima island and nothing, dream or magic or otherwise, had suggested that.

'What are you thinking about so deeply?' asked Ikuko suddenly above him.

He hadn't heard the door open or close at all. 'Wondering if this brain of mine's better with dreams than reality,' Tohya replied with a slight smile. 'Seeing it's a dream that talked me out of doing something stupid.'

'Talked you out…' Ikuko began, before she caught on to the implication. 'Tohya!'

'I couldn't stand it,' he confessed, and her face softened a little. 'I'm sorry.'

'You…' She shook herself, then latched onto something else before she descended into a reprimand that was too little and too late. 'When did you find the time to dream? When your life was flashing in front of your eyes?'

'Something like that,' Tohya agreed, before reconsidering the lack of detail. 'Do you believe in magic?'

She raised in eyebrow at him. 'I'm a mystery author,' she chided. 'I entertain magic as an explanation a character may resort to when faced with something that escapes their ability to explain… But as the author, I'm the god of that universe and able to explain everything.'

Tohya closed his eyes. 'Then let's do it,' he said. 'Write those tales. Every possibility the characters can think of. Every possibility _we_ can think of.'

'The Rokkenjima incident?' she checked.

He dipped his chin.

'Interesting,' she said thoughtfully. 'You were so adverse to it before, I wondered…' She shook her head. 'Well, you'll tell me when you want, I imagine.' She frowned at him. 'But this time, can that be before you throw yourself in front of an incoming car?'

'I'll do my best,' he promised, but he doubted it would happen like that, if things escalated again. 'It was just…intolerable.'

She sighed. 'I can't pretend to understand,' she said.

And he liked that about her. He didn't need someone to pretend, to give false reassurances and useless advice.

'Anyway, since you brought up the story this time, I take it you have a specific plot in mind?

'A few,' he admitted. 'Something to offset the first one first though, I think.'

'The one where Eva Ushiromiya is the culprit?' she asked, amused. 'Well, it's not like we ever wrote that one up. Seems a shame to resort to the same theory the masses use, especially for our first foray into the tale.'

'True.' Especially now that the question of her guilt was in doubt. 'Why not the magic explanation, to start? The inexplainable that they attempt to explain.'

'They?' Ikuko raised an eyebrow, but she entertained the idea nonetheless.

.

It was a couple of years later when they wrote and published the original skeleton draft, the one where Eva Ushiromiya had been the culprit as per the initial slew of memories. Neither of them had expected that particular tale to bring Eva Ushiromiya to their door, considering the number of forgeries that had been revealed by that point.

But she laid out her reasons and they were all valid ones. The stories were too insightful, knowing details taken for granted as fiction in the general public but known to her to be fact. She hadn't been sure, she confessed, seeing as the servants had talked quite a bit about the layout of Rokkenjima after its destruction, but the epitaph in its glorious exactness had proven himself.

She was part-wrong, of course, but not all that surprised to see the truth. She confessed gold was a strange and cruel spell, and memory was no different. Years of hurt were still etched on her face, and Battler Ushiromiya stirred for the first time since the exchange with the Endless Sorcerer and sparked a bit of pity.

That was, of course, separate from Hachijo Tohya's pity for the stern woman in front of them battling with her own shadows.

'Do you dream of a sorcerer?' he asked abruptly.

Eva considered him a moment. 'Not a sorcerer,' she said, and her eyes seemed strangely…accepting. 'But a witch. A witch called Eva.'

They'd hit that nail on the head, then. Funnily enough, that was one of the things they'd used their artistic license to add in, to mirror Battler's and Beatrice's own situations. For Eva to actually have dreams including one… Well, it seemed the witch or sorcerer was a good antithesis, and appropriate how, of the three, the sorcerer was the closest to the white area.

Or maybe that had to do with Ikuko's executive decision to make Battler Ushiromiya the protagonist of their books. Narrator bias.

Still, the crux of her visit had turned out to be the truth, the truth perhaps every mystery writer (and a good many mystery fans) aside from the pair of them were looking for, even if they hadn't managed to put it together themselves.

There were some things more important than the truth, after all, like peace of mind.

And it turned out that Eva Ushiromiya's silence was, in fact, because she harboured the same sentiments herself.

.

The truth didn't set them free. The truth had only been a red herring in the end, to them at least. Even for Ange Ushiromiya who had spent years stewing in anger before Eva's death had realised it hadn't been truth she'd been searching for after all, but everything else she'd lost that day.

And Hachijo Tohya had to admit to his role in keeping that away from her. And his role was two-fold because, after Eva's death, he and Ikuko were the only ones who knew the truth and it was him who insisted on not seeing her.

Maybe it was because he was still afraid of Battler inside of him, even if the echoes were now dim and far between and mostly sedate. On the other hand, the tail end of his discussion with the Endless Sorcerer stuck with him. His own words, at that. That allowing something to say simmering wasn't nearly the same as moving on from it, and maybe the other reason he was avoiding Ange Ushiromiya was because it could very well cascade into that endgame.

Moving on… Wasn't that what he'd wanted all this time? Wasn't that the ideal ending, the ideal endgame? Really… when had he become so indecisive? Maybe because the Tohya he'd been before his memories started trickling in hadn't been all that great either, full of holes and riddled with instability, like an old abandoned house that could collapse at any moment…

And that's what it boiled down to, really. It hadn't been about the past at all, but about the present and the future. And an island explosion and eighteen lives lost over the course of a night served as a very good reminder that the future was uncertain, and so his fears followed it.

And one day, the part of him who was fighting that fear would triumph, and he'd meet Ange Ushiromiya… and that might have nothing or everything to do with acceptance and moving on, but he'd only see when he got there.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the
> 
> Diversity Writing Challenge, i59 - write a doppleganger! AU  
> Chapter Set Boot Camp, #029 - 7 chapters  
> The 100 Prompts, Up to 100 MCs Challenge, #046 - anecdote  
> Advent Calendar 2015, Day 7 - write about game characters


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